Webster and Inspiration - Verbal Inspiration

I found Webster's book Holy Scripture - A Dogmatic Sketch a very stimulating little book. He mounts a defence - or a restatement - even of the much maligned doctrine of verbal inspiration (chapter 1. p. 30ff.):

'Here we reach the particala veri (ie, limited truth) of the notion of verbal inspiration. Because verbal inspiration was routinely misconstrued (sometimes by its defenders and nearly always by its detractors) as entailing divine dictation, the notion of inspriation has been 'personalised' or 'de-verbalised' and redefined as authorial illumination. This distancing of inspiration from the verbal character of the text is considered to ease the difficulties of offering an account of inspiration by thinking of the words of the text as a purely human arena of activity, whether of authors, redactors or tradents. But the result is again docetic. The implied distinction between (inspired) content and creaturely form is awkward, and very easily makes authorial (or perhaps community) consciousness or experience the real substance of the text, of which the words are the external expressions. This is uncomfortably close to those styles of eucharistic theology in which the sacrament is considered to be a transaction between the gospel and the religious consciousness, to which visible forms are accidently attached. No less than consecration, inspiration concerns the relation of God's communication and specific creaturely forms;
inspiration, that is, involves words...' (p. 37-8)

(Is he thinking of Calvin's view of the Supper here? hmm...) He continues:

'Properly understood, 'verbal' inspiration does not extract words from their field of production or reception, does not make the text a less than historical entity, or make the text itself a divine agent. Nor does it entail neglect of the revelatory presence of God in favour of an account of originary inspiration. It simply indicates the inclusion of texts in the sanctifying work of the Spirit so that they may become fitting vessels of the treasure of the gospel.'
(p. 38)

This 'may become' is not just a case of the Scripture becoming the word of God as it is read by the church: he is definitely ascribing to the process of the text coming into being an inspiration by the Holy Spirit.

Rowan Williams raps with Ricky Gervais

This is an intriguing encounter from an apologists point of view. Mainly because Gervais is floundering and inarticulate, and because Williams just waits. Gervais comes across I think as typical of people one meets: wants to own to the word 'spiritual' and also makes it clear just how moral he is, but 'I am living my life'. He also does the typical race from one question to the next without waiting for an answer. I think the best moment was when Williams says 'is fundamentalist religion the only type of religion?' and Gervais goes on to say something along the lines of, 'well, if God exists he would be full on wouldn't he?' This IS quite a revelation I think - it is a similar line of attack to that of Dawkins. He almost refuses to talk seriously any kind of faith but the most fundamentalist kind, so that he can reject it.

Could Williams have done any better than he does here? I think he plays it quite well to score a 3-0 victory in the face of Gervais's blather. It is hard to play such opposition without sinking to the same level. Gervais is becoming more and more like his alter ego David Brent...





He then went on to an interview where he was reported as having denied the nativity story. What in fact he denied was the extra-biblical legendary materials: the big star, the stable, the donkey, that there were THREE kings (when there were certainly three gifts, but who knows how many Magi) and so on. Then he said you could become a Christian without believing the virgin birth, though he himself believed it. Scarcely controversial - but I guess when you have a name for being controversial, people hear what they expect to hear.

Application in sermons

Preachers find the hardest part of the sermon to craft that bit of the end. No wait: actually, I think we preachers would find it hard if we spent any significant time doing it! Also, I have to say we do a rather one dimensional job of it when we do get to this point.

I was prompted by a youth work book I once read to think of the application as touching on three aspects - because 'spiritual development/maturity' also ought to touch on these three aspects. They are:

KNOWING
FEELING
DOING

We need to move from knowledge about God to a deeper knowledge OF God himself.
We need to move from our experiences of God to a deep affection for him.
We need to move from legalism and disobedience into a life overflowing with good works.

Now, each sermon doesn't have to touch on each of these. But it is a helpful guide, to ask at the end: what did I ask people to do (or as a listener, what was I asked to do) in terms of each of the three aspects. And most sermons could touch on each of these in some way.

Gender-neutral language

There has been some discussion recently at Sydney Anglicans about gender-neutral or inclusive language and bible translation. Some are holding out, saying that the tide of trendy political correctness is turning, and that we should hold on to the use of 'men' to mean 'humankind'. Certainly, the structure of the English language makes this more convenient.

I remember thinking this through some years ago. What changed it all for me was reading an early 1970s study (so pre-the 'gender neutral language revolution' of the 1980s) that suggested that indeed a majority of women felt excluded when gender-exclusive language was used. Suffice it to say, I haven't been able to track that study down this morning... I read originally in (shock, horror) a book. Remember them?

Since much gender exclusive language is unneccessary to make the meaning absolutely clear, and since I don't wish to give offence except over the gospel (which is offensive enough and does need my offensive behaviour to add to it) I don't think obliging at this point is too much to ask. Indeed, it may even be a good thing: after all, Christians have led the way since the beginning in treating and accepting women as fully human. Shame we have to drag the chain now. And if many, many women report that they feel excluded by such language (and probably the ones NOT in church, so clergymen don't go off and ask your wives!) then it seems important to make a change. True, I went to uni in the late (as opposed to early) 80s and 90s when this was a cause in a way it isn't today, perhaps. But I - even I - find it embarassing and jarring and distracting when I hear an old 1978 NIV passage read out that translates anthropos as 'men' or adds a 'man' when it is unnecessary.

Especially, I feel that this is imperative for those of us who hold more complementarian positions on women's ministry. The accusation is always going to come that this theological position is just a mask for sexism. If it isn't, then wherever genuine sexism is present we need to eradicate it and to show that we are serious about it. This isn't caving in to the culture anymore than having proper procedures for dealing with child abuse is caving in to the culture... don't you think?

[Added later] - It seems to me there are different levels of acceptability for gendered language. You can slip in an occassional 'man' or 'mankind' (meaning 'the human race') and no-one seems to mind too much, especially if you are quoting ('one giant leap for mankind'). But using the male pronoun to represent both is much less acceptable - though a nice alternative to the gendered pronoun in English is harder to find.

A bore and a boar....

Do they know it's Christmas?

It has taken me 23 years to think these thoughts but:

why would people in chiefly Muslim countries care whether it was Christmas or not?

and

Does it strike you that Bono's line in the song,

namely 'tonight thank God it's them instead of yooooooooooouuuuuu'

is an absolutely awful sentiment?

Apocalyptic Amillennialism?

From my RTR article 'Left Behind? Christian Eschatology and Society in the Age of Terror' vol 63, 2004.

...We take issue with the eschatologies of pre- and post-millennialists, Moltmann and the liberation theologians. Amillennialism seems a more biblically satisfactory position, although it has a tendency to over-spiritualise the Kingdom’s presence and to embrace a smug ecclesiastical imperialism.[1] However, the re-emergence of the apocalyptic in twentieth century theology, in the tradition of Luther, has restored balance to the biblical horizon. Apocalyptic literature of both Testaments focuses on the sovereignty of God over the cosmos and history, his vindication of his people (involving resurrection) in righteous judgment and his “supernatural” and dramatic intervention in history to bring these things to pass. There is a radical discontinuity between the present, which features a great struggle between good and evil, and the apocalyptic future. The apocalyptic literature of the New Testament picks up the universalism of other passages which speak of the cosmic scope of God’s redemptive act in Christ (1 Cor 15:22, Col 1:19-20, Phil 2:9-11, I Tim 2:4-6), and at the same time paints a clearly separationist picture which rightly reflects the Biblical vision of God’s eternal justice. A decisive irruption into history is indeed necessary for the fulfillment of the times. Even historicist (and Hegelian) Wolfhart Pannenberg admits:

Nothing less than a new heaven and a new earth (Rev 21:1; cf 20:11 and Isa 65:17) is demanded as a prerequisite for the definitive actualizing of the kingdom of God.[2]

[1] Bloesch, op.cit., p.197
[2] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, op.cit., p.584

Criteria for success?

An important task for the writer of a thesis is to set himself some criteria by which the success of his argument might be rated.

In my case, I am setting up my argument as a response to a Rushdie-led attack on the life which is given shape by Christian martyrdom. How will I be able to measure my success in this?

1 - If I can show that Rushdie has mis-described Christian martyrdom, or at least, that his account of martyrdom, while fitting for some religious and even some Christian martyrdoms, does not fit for authentic Christian martyrdom. It is just not accurate. So, his critique won't stick, though we may welcome the chance to clarify things.

2 - Further, Rushdie's concerns for human life and identity that he thinks are corrupted or negated by Christian martyrdom are actually affirmed by them. The human aspirations and longings that he records are actually fulfilled or better fulfilled in the Christian self-understanding.

3 - But: we don't necessarily want to accept the terms of the discussion as set by Rushdie and others. My aim is not to win according to the terms he sets, but to through his terms into question. This I fear happens with a number of theological accounts of martyrdom where the concept is so broadened to include people who die for liberal or democratic or tolerant values. To include someone that Rushdie accepts is not my idea of victory. Gandhi was not a Christian martyr, however noble he was. Neither do I want to be reduced to a consequentialist debate. That would undo the whole point of martyrdom, which is a witness to 'another' reality.

4 - If I can show that the martyr's life and death has an explanatory power that continues to be compelling for human life, then I will have succeeded (I like to imagine). That is, to show that martyrdom is a form of 'piety', but that 'piety' is utterly transformed under the acid of martyrdom, so that we accept the challenge of the Rushdies but do not accept entire their framing of the challenge...

The Census - Luke 2:1

Luke starts off his Christmas narrative by locating it quite precisely in time and space: 'it happened in those days that there came a decree from Caesar Augustus to make a census of all the inhabited world'. This was, as Luke explains, the first census during the time that Quirinius was governor of Syria.

Why do governors make censuses? I suppose in the democratic-bureaucratic states in which most of us live, the act of census making appears perfectly innocent - it allows the government to better allocate resources for health care and policing and roads, for example. Or at least we are able to overlook its more sinister possibilities because of the benefits we receive. But for the ancient world the act of making a census was not for the benefit of the ruled so much as for the ruler. An accurate census meant more effective and lucrative taxation. It meant quite clearly that the known world was under the Roman thumb. It was an act of peace-making, in a way: because it meant the subduing and ordering of the peoples of the earth. It was surveillance as best the ancient world could do it. This was the mighty and divine Augustus, declaring that the pax Romanum had come upon the earth.

And, as governmental decrees tend to, it meant a bureaucratic inconvenience for the little person on the fringe. Even heavily pregnant women had to make a journey in order to fall in with the Roman programme.

Publication of some reviews: Anvil and Churchman

Hey, I have had two reviews published just recently. One is of Vanhoozer's The Drama of Doctrine and finds itself in the latest Anvil 24/3.

The other is in Churchman 121/4 and is of the first two volumes of Goldingay's Old Testament Theology.

Just thought you might like to know...

The Men Who Stare At Goats

Hearing reports about CIA agents torturing terror suspects chills me to the bone. Turns out this 'conspiracy' had the ring of truth after all. It reminded me of this review I wrote a couple of years back:


After The Da Vinci Code I have learnt not to trust books that begin by saying that “this is a true story.” It is pretty much an admission by the author that what is contained within the covers of the work is, well, unbelievable. It has a plausibility problem.

And I am not prone to believe conspiracy theories. Yes, the Apollo moon landings did occur. No, the CIA and the Mafia didn’t shoot JFK: Lee Harvey Oswald did it.

But the more bizarre elements of Jon Ronson’s The Men Who Stare At Goats are anchored in a disturbing reality that we know to be the truth. The shocking images from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were too weird, too perfectly calculated to do psycho-sexual and cultural damage, to be merely a case of a couple of bored, barely literate prison guards having a lark.

What mentality, what tactic, lead to the pyramids of naked prisoners? Recent reports of Australian Mamdouh Habib being splattered with the menstrual blood of prostitutes while in captivity at Guantanamo Bay are entirely in keeping with the species of prisoner interrogation displayed at Abu Ghraib.

Ronson’s story is a meandering series of interviews with ex-army personnel, false trails, intriguing rumours and investigative journalism. He struggles to make sense of it all, a feeling I, for one, share. One way of reading the story is this: that following the embarrassment of Vietnam the US military has invested heavily in alternative forms of warfare, including experiments in the paranormal. According to Ronson’s sources, they even had men trying to kill goats just by staring at them. That would, I guess, give an army a certain advantage over the enemy.

In the 1970s, Vietnam vet and lieutenant colonel named Jim Channon wrote a book called The First Earth Battalion Operations Manual. Channon imagined an army of the New Age, whose soldiers “would carry with them into hostile countries ‘symbolic animals’ such as baby lambs” (p.41). They would greet the enemy with “sparkly eyes” and give them an “automatic hug.” Ambient music would be broadcast to pacify the enemy. He presented his ideas to the top brass…

Only, once the military regained its confidence, it saw that some of the ideas in the manual could be used to shatter people rather than to heal them. Loud and repetitive music (rather than noodling ambient sounds) has been used by the Psychological Operations (PsyOps) group in Panama, at the Waco siege in Texas, in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The theme tune to children’s programme Barney the Dinosaur was blasted at some Iraqi detainees in a shipping container in the desert, as well as some Sesame Street favourites. Ronson records a hilarious interview with composer of some of the melodies used, who considers claiming royalties; and then he visits the PsyOps HQ to inspect their CD collection. They have Avril Lavigne, apparently.

Are the US military really experimenting with parapsychology and having battalions of men stare at goats? Some of the people Ronson interviews seem to have the obsessive intensity of the truly unhinged and lack credibility. But then – they would, wouldn’t they?

There certainly are some pretty unorthodox methods being used by the US to wage war and interrogate captives. Would it really be surprising if it were true?

The point is that the War on Terror particularly and the defence of freedom generally have produced an odd kind of paranoia among some people who have the power and resources to put their whacky ideas into practice.

But there is a blindness to see that this is in itself terror of another kind. The symbolic terror of the destruction of the two towers has its counterpart in the utter shaming of the bodies and minds of these hapless captives. The ideological madness of the religious extremists on the one side is well matched by this furtive nuttiness on the side of the forces of freedom. It makes George W. Bush’s appeal (in his second inaugural address) to a common humanity made in the image of the creator ring more than a little hollow.

The Sin of Impiety

What disturbed the pagans about the Christians?

That in itself is a tricky historical question. But, broadly speaking, the first Christians stood accused of impiety. That word or its opposite is actually used often in the martyr-acts in the interrogation of the suspects, and despite the Christians protesting that in fact they were dutiful citizens in good standing with everybody, they could not go forward and sacrifice to the Emperor in order to maintain the peace. That is to say, their lack of worshipful regard for the spirits that were held to be the guarantors of social order and agricultural fruitfulness caused their neighbours no end of worry. Tertullian famously wrote (in Apologeticum 40): "If the Tiber rises so high it floods the walls, or the Nile so low it doesn't flood the fields, if the earth opens, or the heavens don't, if there is famine, if there is plague, instantly the howl goes up, "The Christians to the lion!" What, all of them? to a single lion?" Ha ha. Christians were labelled atheists because of their impiety.

I have mentioned Jeffrey Stout's definition of piety before:

Piety ... is not to be understood primarily as a felling, expressed in acts of devotion, but rather as a virtue, a morally excellent aspect of character. It consists in just or appropriate response to the sources of one's existence and progress through life. Family, political community, the natural world, and God are all said to be sources on which we depend, sources to be acknowledged appropriately.

We need to forget the use of piety in its strictly religious sense. In Stout's sense, there remains today a properly social piety: that 'just or appropriate response to the sources of one's existence and progress'. These may be entirely material: so, the nostrums of liberal order - free speech, rights, freedom of/from religion, equality and so on, need to be treated with due regard. They can even be sung about. It is interesting that 'good luck' or 'fate' still looms large in contemporary vision of piety, since whatever good fortune we enjoy is a result of the turn of the wheel in our favour. And so, modern culture is replete with sacrifices to fortune - in the form of gambling and divinisation; and also defences erected against the arbitrary turns of the wheel (life insurance anyone?). Also, the almost sacred regard family enjoys, even today, comes unexpectedly to those who continually rail against its demise. Environmentalism (rightly) appeals to piety in this sense.

Is it fair to say that Christians stand once again accused of impiety: for we give scant regard to 'luck', or ought not to. More importantly perhaps, we with other religious people threaten the fragile and hard won peace of our communities by bringing our beliefs to the table. Or, by becoming another special interest lobby group we cut ourselves off from our community and the duties of membership in it. We deny the absoluteness of family ties (or ought to); we shockingly tell young people that they ought not to pursue material goals or pleasure as their priority. By suggesting that all religions are not the same we again stand accused of threatening the social order, of inflaming 'religious hatred' or whatever...

Charles Taylor - A Secular Age III

Taylor's book is studded with great insights, and written with the lucidity of a chat over coffee. I have interrupted the story of the switch from the porous self to the buffered self to dip into the book at more random places today. This stood out, given my recent thinking about matters papal:

The secular age is schizophrenic, or better, deeply cross-pressured. People seem at a safe distance from religion; and yet they are very moved to know that there are dedicated believers, like Mother Teresa. The unbelieving world, well used to disliking Pius XII, was bowled over by John XXIII. A Pope just had to sound like a Christian, and many immemorial resistances melted...It's as though many people who don't want to follow want nevertheless to hear the message of Christ, want it to be proclaimed out there. The paradox was evident in the response to the late Pope. Many people were inspired by John Paul's public perpatetic preaching, about love, about world peace, about international economic justice. They are thrilled that these things are being said. But even many Catholics among his admireres didn't feel that they must follow his all his moral injunctions... (p. 727)

What does this mean for a diocese at mission, like the Sydney diocese?

On the Religion Report talking about Benedict's encyclical

You can listen to a discussion I had with the ABC's Stephen Crittenden on Benedict XVI's latest encyclical here. It is about 44 mins into the programme.

Buffered self vs porous self

Sounds kind of painful, doesn't it? But this is the way Charles Taylor describes the difference between the outlook of the individual of 1500 and the contemporary person.

The pre-modern self is 'porous' because it thought of itself as deeply situated in an enchanted world and open to being influenced and signified by forces emanating from that world.

The 'buffered' self of modernity considers its purposes and meanings as arising not from without but from within.

Take emotions for example: a depressed porous self may consider himself prey to cosmic realities that can affect us. Suffering from melancholy, he may cite the presence of black bile which is not the cause of melancholy: it IS melancholy. The depression is part of being embedded in a universe redolent with meanings. He is in the grip of the real thing.

The depressed buffered self on the other hand will be able to take a step of disengagement from his feelings by saying 'it is just my body chemistry' - and take a pill. The chemistry doesn't have the meaning - it just feels that way.

How did this change in perspective come about? Well, I do think the Reformation had more than a little to do with it. That is, there was a specifically theological change of tack that led to the disenchantment of the universe. I wonder if Taylor shares this thought...

A attempt at a renewed outline... (notice Eliot has disappered!)

Martyrdom is an dramatisation of the Christian self-understanding. As such it highlights the dissonance between the Christian and non-Christian views of human freedom, fulfillment and meaning. In fact, Salman Rushdie articulates a very powerful stream of anti-religious sentiment within secular western culture which specifically targets that religious self-understanding that would result in a person's death like this. He accuses martyrs of a dishonest way of approaching death, of an inauthentic selfhood, of a hatred of pleasure and a denial of the goodness of the world, of self-interest and tribalism, of promoting social disorder and stifling human aspirations.

How might Christians respond to this vigorous critique and yet maintain their identity and witness as Christians? Well, a number of possible and tempting reconciliations are on offer. Martha Nussbaum suggests that Christians are too narrow and inflexible in their approach, and ought to broaden their moral sources. Richard Rorty appeals to us to hold our metaphysical commitments at arms length, especially in public. Roger Scruton appeals to duty to the national identity. Following these is more an accusation than a temptation: that martyrdom really just reveals how egotistical Christianity is and Christians are.
However none of these suggestions proves adequate to both....

Charles Taylor - A Secular Age

Well Charles Taylor's mighty effort A Secular Age is here. I am daunted by the prospect: I am still chewing over things I learnt in Sources of the Self.

His opening ploy is to say that the word 'secular' has been used in three senses. 'Secularity 1' describes the secularisation of public spaces - it is the official separation of church and state for example, or the insistence that religious arguments be inadmissable in public debate.

'Secularity 2' however has come about at pretty much the same time. And that is the decline of religious belief and practice. Now, S1 needn't mean S2: in the US there is a very strong sense of S1 but if anything a stronger sense that S2 is not occuring.

But Taylor's object in this study is S3: which he says 'consists of new conditions of belief; it consists in a new shape to the experience which prompts to and is defined by belief; in a new context in which all search and questioning about the moral and spiritual must proceed.' (p. 20) Or, earlier he says 'the change I want to define and trace is on e which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one possibility among others...Belief in God is no longer axiomatic. There are alternatives.'

Secularity in this sense is a whole context of understanding, in which our moral/religious quest takes place. Taylor interestingly argues that S1 did not bring about S2, as is commonly thought: but it did bring about or had a share in bringing about S3...

Jerry Springer the Opera

This story about an evangelical Christian group who have sought to prosecute the director of the BBC on the basis of blasphemy laws in the United Kingdom got right up my nose for a couple of reasons.

One is that Christians have to stop taking offence on behalf of Jesus. Taking offence is exactly what secular liberals expect religious people to do - to respond irrationally and emotionally to the negative or irreverent depiction of religious subject matter. It is what Islamic groups do. To then seek protection from the law is entirely counter-productive, as was demonstrated in this case. Challenged to act on the blasphemy laws, the court actually said that broadcasts and theatrical performances were exempt from them. So, the result is a huge net loss for the Christian cause: whereas previously performers might have restrained themselves, they now have a legal ruling that they can say and show what they like vis a vis Christianity. Good job, Christian Voice!

But, having said that: the liberal or humanist voices that jump up to defend the likes of Jerry Springer the Opera as an important work of art or what have you are having a laugh. JStO - I viewed part of it on the BBC - is a deliberately offensive and crass piece of undergraduate drama that has been given far too much publicity. It is a shame that in our society the BBC (for example) couldn't make the free decision to respect the beliefs of many of its licence-paying subscribers and not show it because it trampled underfoot something they hold precious. Why does it have to see something like this as 'cutting edge television'?

Further, the court ruled that because there were no negative effects - no riots, no marches, no mass civil disobedience, (actually, there were some very civilised protest marches) - that blasphemy could not be upheld. These were the words of the ruling:
The play had been performed regularly in major theatres in London for a period of nearly two years without any sign of it undermining society or occasioning civil strife or unrest...
Since when was strife the yardstick for blasphemy? And in order to receive protection from the blasphemy laws, do Christians have to act like some Muslims did - that is, disgracefully - when the Danish cartoon fiasco occurred?

As I said, Jesus's name will be honoured without the help of blasphemy laws: and it is to the loss of those involved in the Jerry Springer production if they don't see it yet. It is a matter for weeping, not protesting.

Jeffrey Stout and Piety II

Piety - an intriguing notion. It was precisely for lack of piety - meaning that mix of civil and religious duty - that the early martyrs were killed.

I think the accusation is still very much in play: Christians, if/when they are faithful witnesses, stand accused of impiety against the liberal secular order.

Stout describes modern piety thus:

Piety ... is not to be understood primarily as a felling, expressed in acts of devotion, but rather as a virtue, a morally excellent aspect of character. It consists in just or appropriate response to the sources of one's existence and progress through life. Family, political community, the natural wolrd, and God are all said to be sources on which we depend, sources to be acknowledged appropriately. Emersonians and Augustinians agree that piety, in this sense, is a crucial virtue, and they share an interest in clarifying the proper relationship between civic and religious piety. But they disagree over how the sourecs should be conceived and what constitutes appropriate acknowledgment of our dependence on them. ( Democracy and Tradition, p. 20)

Benedict XVI proves my point...

The pope's latest encyclical, whose title is 'In hope we are saved', proves my point about the renewed interest in martyrdom:

Certainly, in our many different sufferings and trials we always need the lesser and greater hopes too—a kind visit, the healing of internal and external wounds, a favourable resolution of a crisis, and so on. In our lesser trials these kinds of hope may even be sufficient. But in truly great trials, where I must make a definitive decision to place the truth before my own welfare, career and possessions, I need the certitude of that true, great hope of which we have spoken here. For this too we need witnesses—martyrs—who have given themselves totally, so as to show us the way—day after day. We need them if we are to prefer goodness to comfort, even in the little choices we face each day—knowing that this is how we live life to the full. Let us say it once again: the capacity to suffer for the sake of the truth is the measure of humanity. Yet this capacity to suffer depends on the type and extent of the hope that we bear within us and build upon. The saints were able to make the great journey of human existence in the way that Christ had done before them, because they were brimming with great hope

Why the renewed interest in martyrdom?

I think it is quite fair to say that, whereas martyrdom was scarcely mentioned by theologians of a generation ago, today martyrdom is mentioned by almost everybody. Why? What has changed?

Here are my speculations:

• as we have moved into a post-Christendom situation, theologians are more aware of a creeping hostility to their discipline, and to the church in the wider culture. Instead of feeling part of a largely Christianised culture, we now find ourselves seeking an identity in contradistinction to the culture. These are themes in the theologies of Milbank and Hauerwas among others, too.
• a move away from abstraction towards enfleshed particularity; the attraction of the exemplar, in moral terms rather than the theory.
• a growing awareness of the plight of Christians world-wide, and the way in which real martyrs have made a difference in terrible situations in recent times. Luwum and Romero, for example.
• has liberation theology made a difference here?
• the spectacle and fear of religious violence

Hmmm....

Hart on Providence

Does God do micro-management? And more importantly: how do we account for human freedom as a real and not imaginary gift of God if we have a view of God's providence that is too unvariegated? What is more: how can we account for God's providence without accusing him of commiting evil?

Hart says:

Certainly all Christians must affirm God's transcendent governance of everything, even fallen history and fallen nature, and must believe that by that governance he will defeat evil and bring the final good of all things out of the darkness of 'this age'. It makes a considerable difference, however - nothing less than our unerstand of the nature of God is at stake - whether one says that God has eternally willed the history of sin and death, and all that comes to pass therein,as the proper or necessary means of achieving his ends, or whether one says instead that god has willed his good in creatures from eternity and will bring it to pass, despite their rebellion, by so ordering all thigs toward his goodness tha even evil (which he does not cause) becomes an occasion of the operations of grace. And it is only the latter view than can accurately be called a doctrine of 'providence' in the properly theological sense: the former is mere determinism. (p. 82)

This makes a good deal of sense to me: it has to be possible that God does not will the death of a sinner, but that the sinner does indeed die. (2 Peter 3:9). And, if we are not careful in our attribution of all causation to the will of God, God merely becomes the devil in disguise. Aquinas posited a primary level of causation (ie God's) which transcends the secondary causes which are merely finite. So, my decision to get a cup of coffee in the morning is truly mine, though it arises out of appetites and conditions that aren't mine - my body, the world's economy that enables cheapish coffee to be delivered to me, the fashion to drink coffee etc. God does decide for me, at that level: but his providential will surrounds and transcends my will at every side. This means that I don't have to fall for those 'open God' theologies, which are beneath contempt, frankly.

Hart does not however deal with a couple of passages which seem to indicate a more micro-managing approach: Jesus talking about the sparrows and the lilies, for example....

A word on scripture in theology

A word as to hermeneutical method deployed is needed at this point [ie in my thesis!]. The early martyr-acts and the patristic discussions of martyrdom are richly drenched in scriptural references and allusions. This was possible and meaningful because (despite the variety of methods of interpretation used) the scriptures were held to be a unity cohering in Christ, the one whose death provided the template for Christian martyrdom. The texts of scripture had particular import for these individuals facing a terrible death, and as it is reported, gave them particular inspiration and solace.[1] Scripture ought to have particular prominence and authority in any theological account of martyrdom, therefore. More than this: a reading of the canonical scriptures which highlights their salvation-historical – and so Christological – shape is the appropriate complement to the subject at hand, because theological reflection on martyrdom has always had this perspective in one way or another. We attempt to read scripture, therefore, with an eye to its unfolding disclosure of a history of redemption as well as to the theological concepts that it generates.[2] The readings of scripture we attempt here are necessarily selective, but in each case the selections of texts are neither arbitrary nor irrelevant. The salvation-historical nature of the material necessarily plunges us into the business of narrative analysis; but it also the case that the scriptures provide the frame, or chart the trajectory for a theological discussion they themselves prompt but do not provide.

[1] Brad S. Gregory says the same about the martyrs of the Reformation era. Gregory, Salvation at Stake : Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe, p. ??
[2] We hope to take heed of Oliver O’Donovan’s stern warning not to ‘dip into Israel’s experience at one point … and to take out a single disconnected image or theme from it’ which would be ‘to treat the history of God’s reign like a commonplace book or a dictionary of quotations.’ Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations - Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 27.

Post-It label Theology...

In his impressive book Bound to Sin, Alistair McFadyen makes an appeal against ‘Post-It™ label theology’, which, he explains, is when God is ‘stuck on’ to secular analyses and descriptions of the world. For it to carry explanatory force, theology must add something significant to our level of explanation and understanding of the world. As McFadyen puts it with regard to his study of sin:

If God is the most basic reality and explanation of the world, then it must be the case that the world cannot adequately be explained, understood, lived in, without reference to God in our fundamental means both of discernment and action.

Which means that theology ought to be more attentive to its own way speaking and to its own concepts than to concepts drawn from elsewhere.

(Alistair I. McFadyen, Bound to Sin: Abuse, Holocaust, and the Christian Doctrine of Sin, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine; 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) p.12. )

The Doors of the Sea - Where was God in the Tsunami?

David Bentley Hart's small book The Doors of the Sea has finally reached me. I am surprised how vehemently it is an attack on certain Reformed understandings of the sovereignty of God - but then again, I do think that there is something weird, even perverse, about the way God is celebrated as a pure absolute will by some Reformed writers (though this is probably caricature, Hart provides some gob-smackingly callous examples of Reformed responses to the tsunami).

I thought this point was well made (among others):

...disturbing as it may be, it is clearly the case that there is a kind of 'provisional' cosmic dualism within the New Testament: not an ultimate dualism of course, between two equal princinples; but certainly a conflict between a sphere of created autonomy that strives against God on the one hand and the saving of God in time on the other...To say that God elects to fashion rational creatures in his image, and so grants them the freedom to bind themselves and the greater physical order to another master - to say that he who sealed up the doors of the sea might permit them to be opened again by another, more reckless hand - is not to say that God's ultimate design for his creatures can be thwarted. It is to acknowledge, however, that his will can be resisted by a real and (by his grace) autonomous force of defiance, or can be hidden from us by the history of cosmic corruption, and that final realization of the good he intends in all things has the form (not simply as a dramatic fiction, for our edification or his glory, nor simplay as a paedagogical device on his part, but in truth) of a divine victory. (p. 61-62)

I think provisional dualism is right: it allows for this 'autonomous' force of defiance, with which we have to deal, and whom we are to take seriously, but also ensures that God isn't somehow threatened ultimately by the struggle.

Of the use of literature in theological work

In my doctoral work I have made a use of TS Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral as a framing device and a stimulus to theological and scriptural reflection.

This strategy could be objected to on the grounds that:

• Eliot was at best an amateur theologian (he himself used this term)- and, in fact, had some heterodox tendencies (for example, the influence of Eastern non-Christian mysticism is evident even in his later work).
• His purpose was aesthetic rather than theological - this isn't serious theology
• in fact, there is a long Christian tradition of suspicion of drama

To which I reply:

• the tradition of Christian theological reflection includes quite a number of literary/aesthetic works, and should not exclude them. In fact, exclusion of them would greatly impoverish the tradition of Christian thought.
• a number of significant contemporary philosophers are using literary narratives and plays in their work. Martha Nussbaum and Richard Rorty are but two examples. Narratives necessarily embedd discussion of human life in relationships with others and in time - ie, they enable a complex discussion of the human situation.
• what is more, serious theologians - Hauerwas for example, and Rowan Williams and Paul Fiddes and David Ford - are using literary works in precisely this way. They do so not merely in a 'literature and theology' mode, but to enrich their discussion of theological concepts - ie in 'serious' theology.
• imaginative works have always had an influence on Christian theological thought and it is just a kind of academic snobbery to exclude them, or to question their place in the debate.
• in fact, narratives of imaginative power have a capacity to do what abstract theological work cannot. They are perhaps more suited to the business at hand - because they deal with humans in the midst of life, under the eye of providence etc.
• And, the obvious point: the Bible is more 'literary' than it is 'philosophical'!

Butterfield and elasticity of mind

Richard Rorty wants we citizens to be 'ironists': to hold loose to our ideological commitments and to our metaphysical beliefs. This is the basis of the healthy disrespect necessary for the maintenance of sound liberal political order. Ideology causes us to be cruel.

Of course, one difficulty as with many liberal suggestions, is that it asks religious people to be two people instead of one - something Tony Blair has recently said himself. Even as PM, he had to maintain a secret double life as a Christian believer, pretending that he made decisions without reference to his beliefs. But, more than this: is the ironic stance beloved of Rorty really feasible in a time of crisis when something more is required?

Actually, the rule of Christ ought to give the Christian just the sense of irony about human systems of rule that Rorty wants - with all the pragmatic benefits (if we must stoop to his level). Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield, writing in the aftermath of WWII, wrote this remarkable conclusion to his book Christianity and History:

In these days ... when people are so much the prisoners of systems - especially of those general ideas which mark the spirit of the age - it is not always realised that beleif in God gives us great elasticity of mind, rescuing us from too great subservience to intermediate principles, whether these are related to nationality or ideology or science. It even enables us to leave more play in our minds for the things that nature or history may still have to reveal to us in the near future. Similarly, Christianity is not tied to regimes - not compelled to regard the existing order as the very end of life and the embodiment of all our values. Christians have too often tried to put the brake on things in the past, bu at the critical turning-points in history they have les reason that others to be afraid that a new kind of society or civilisation will leave them with nothing to live for. ..There are times when we can never meet the future with sufficient elasticity of mind, especially if we are locked in the contemnporary systems of thougt. We can do worse than remember a principle which both gives us a firm Rock and leaves us the maximum elasticity for our minds: the principle: Hold to Christ, and for the rest be totally uncommitted.

This 'elasticity of mind': I think this is superior to Rorty's irony, and founded on something other than merely what apparently 'works'.

Bible Commentaries - a plea for sanity (or, in praise of eisegesis)

It's got to stop...


I was just checking through some Bible Commentaries yesterday and I was astonished at the proliferation of mighty tomes that have been published in the last few years. Ephesians is a case in point, with several major commentaries being published in the last decade - including the daddy of them all Hoehner's 960 page volume. Or, take the case of the Book of Revelation: Aune's three-volume account is matched by Beale's 1245 page effort!

This phenomena is fairly recent, I think. In the sixties and seventies, perhaps one major commentary would be published per decade (correct me if I am wrong). But with the computerisation of academia and the growth of theological education in the US especially, the steady flow is now an avalanche of commentary. Library shelves are heaving with the things: and the books themselves get bigger and bigger...

I don't think this is a sign of health. The sheer size of commentaries indicates that commentators are still working with an encyclopeadist's mentality, accumulating references and knowledge, and trying to provide as comprehensive an account of the field as possible. No article or monograph is left unreferenced; no alternative argument left unconsidered. Each new commentary pleads to be considered the one-stop-shop for all your Ephesians needs - until the next one comes along, and like an upgrade of Windows, makes everything before it redundant.

There seems to be a tacit assumption that more information equates to better knowledge and greater enlightenment. It doesn't. The commentator operates still with an objectivist mindset: the assumption being that the skill of exegesis means the removal of all personal touches from the commentary whatsoever. That is to say: exegetes assume that textual interpretation is best served by a quasi-scientific distance and dispassion. It isn't!

Further, this tendency heightens the impression (long fostered by those in the field of biblical studies) that expert knowledge is utterly indispensible for any comprehension at all. It is just impossible for a non-specialist to get accross it all - you could give a life time just to reading commentaries on the book of Romans written since 1980! In addition, the experts are under pressure to come up with some new way of reading in order to make their name professionally and so get a nice job and some recognition. Now, I don't want to be too cynical or obscurantist here, but this leads to crackpot theories getting more airtime than they ought, just because they are novel (here's a particularly egregious example). Or you find the commentator almost wondering aloud whether he/she has anyting new to say: I found Douglas Moo on Romans to be one of the least helpful on this score: he can't decide between various readings, so he blends them all together, leaving you even more confused than you were before.

My first degree was in English literature. I was trained in the art of reading - reading texts closely, and in relation to other texts. When I began my theological studies, I had assumed that I would find Biblical Studies the sub-discipline that attracted me most. I was quite dismayed to find that the art of reading texts had nothing to do with biblical studies by and large. The two disciplines were not at all related - despite some hokey attempts around the 80s and early 90s to introduce 'literary criticism' in to the field. These were pretty much like seeing your old dad dancing at your 21st...

The best commentaries, to my mind, aren't by exegetical specialists but by people who were preachers, theologians and churchmen. The commentaries of Calvin, for example: meant as a companion set with his sermons and the Institutes. Luther's landmark work. Barth on Romans. Augustine. What is different here? Well, partly, it is that there is no hint of an attempt at pseudo-objectivity. In each case, the context and personality of the commentator is unashamedly in evidence. You could correct the reading of each in numerous ways - but then, they are not attempting to be comprehensive and definitive for all times. You need to be an eisegete in order to be an effective exegete. That's how reading texts works. This isn't postmodern relativism: this is just how texts work!

So, a plea to Biblical Studies boffins: stop and delate all those major commentaries you were working on. They aren't helping! We don't want them! Rather: let's have more wood and fewer trees. Let's have a disciplined limit on the length of commentaries (if we must have them) - no more than 250 pages please. And, liberated from that task, get on and do something that serves the church.

And to preachers: stop purchasing the things! They aren't helping your sermon preparation - and they certainly aren't helping your sermons. They are high-cost high redundancy items. Find the absolute classics in each book and stick with those. Buy some theology instead, or read a novel or two, or a biography, or philosophy. Make your Greek better and read the text for yourself! Spend more time in prayer even. Your spouse will appreciate the space you save by not buying commentaries, too.

David Bentley Hart on the first commandment

Try this sample of David Bentley Hart. He must be tough to play Scrabble against! Here's a taste of the sample:

'....developed Christian theology rejected nothing good in the metaphysics, ethics, or method of ancient philosophy, but—with a kind of omnivorous glee—assimilated such elements as served its ends, and always improved them in the process. Stoic morality, Plato’s language of the Good, Aristotle’s metaphysics of act and potency—all became richer and more coherent when emancipated from the morbid myths of sacrificial economy and tragic necessity. In truth, Christian theology nowhere more wantonly celebrated its triumph over the old gods than in the use it made of the so-called spolia Aegyptorum; and, by despoiling pagan philosophy of its most splendid achievements and integrating them into a vision of reality more complete than philosophy could attain on its own, theology took to itself irrevocably all the intellectual glories of antiquity. The temples were stripped of their gold and precious ornaments, the sacred vessels were carried away into the precincts of the Church and turned to better uses, and nothing was left behind but a few grim, gaunt ruins to lure back the occasional disenchanted Christian and shelter a few atavistic ghosts. '

hybrids...

This email was passed on to me this evening:

As you may know a Bill shortly due to come before Parliament would permit experiments that much of the world would like to see outlawed. Scientists will be permitted to create 'true hybrids', embryos that would have a human parent and a nonhuman parent. These embryos would be destroyed at 14 days but the question remains: what kind of creatures would they be? In every country law and ethics distinguishes human embryos from pig embryos. What then should be said of a half human half pig embryo? I believe that we are in danger of following Dr Moreau in the novel by HG Wells, who says of his animal-human creations, 'I went on with this research just the way it led me. I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter.'If you like me are opposed to the creation of human nonhuman hybrids (and perhaps like me more than a little sceptical of the supposed necessity for the research) then please sign the following petitions and also pass on this email.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/stemcell/
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/HybridEmbryos/

Professor David A Jones
Professor of Bioethics
St Mary's University College,
Twickenham

Bultmann on demythologizing

We have been reading Bultmann, and I am sorry Ben Myers, but we have all been quite disappointed. It just seems so, well, dated. Never mind - he puts this really good question to all of us: where do you demythologize? We all do it (he says), so where do you?

In many cases we demythologize unintentionally and unreflectively by taking the mythological statements of the Bible as pictures that have long since lost their originial mythical sense. This is done most easily, naturally, with poetic writings in the Bible like the Psalms, in which the mythological language may in many cases already have been intended poetically. In our daily life, also, we use pictures that stem from mythical thinking, as when we say. for example, that our heart prompts us to do this or that - a statement that no one understands any longer in its original mythological sense, But those of us who have to interpret scripture responsibily ought to be conscious of what we are doing and to remind ourselves that honesty at this point requires us to be radical.

More radical? I am not sure: certainly, more honest and more systematic perhaps. Perhaps, too, the problem lies in calling this process 'demythologization', which implies a certain discovery of the 'real' intentions of the author - intentions that he not have been aware of himself.

Stout on academic theology

While I wait for my copy of Charles Taylor's book The Secular Age to arrive, I have been dipping in to Stout's book Ethics After Babel. He some very perceptive comments to make about the disconnection between seminary professors and their students (on the American scene anyhow). The problem for the seminary prof is that constituency in the classroom (ie, the fee-paying students) are on the whole embarassingly pietistic and dogmatic (from Stout's perspective). And yet they long for academic credibility - so they have distance themselves from their own students. Stout continues:

...secular intellectuals have largely stopped paying attention. They don't need to be told, by theologians, that Genesis is mythical, that nobody knows much about the historical Jesus, that it's morally imperative to side with the oppressed, or that birth control is morally permissible. The explanation for the eclipse of religious ethics in recent secular moral philosophy may therefore be rather more straightforward than I have suggested so far. It may be that academic theologians have increasingly given the impression of saying nothing atheistis don't already know.

So, are we just going to blog forever, or what?

Sometimes I do wonder what is to become of all this blogging. It is such a new medium. What does it mean for how one is perceived, for example? When I meet people who say 'oh, yes, I have read your blog' I feel quite embarassed for some reason (maybe it is obvious to you readers out there!). I suppose it is because, even though this is a very impersonal blog as far as blogs go, they know something about me already.

I also perceive a certain contempt for blogging from older people, especially older Christians, who think (with some justification) that blogs are sinkholes for gossip and half-formed thoughts written by people who couldn't accept the discipline of publishing something.

And I do notice that when I encounter someone else who blogs a lot my first instinct is to say 'they clearly don't have enough to do at work!' I am not sure yet that having a blog is a way to be taken very seriously!

I am also conscious of the responsibility of the teaching office to which I have been called (in whatever way you understand it): that half-baked thoughts undermine the dignity of the calling somewhat.

Am we just supposed to blog from here to kingdom come? Is that it?

Baddeley on 'Creation' 'Science'

Mark Baddeley does some excellent stuff critiquing 'Creation Science' (so-called) -

here, here and here.

My favourite point is that Creation Scientists don't take Genesis literally enough.

Seumas on Cyprian on Martyrdom

Seamas sent me a copy of his project on Cyprian's theology of martyrdom. And very interesting it is too. Here are a couple of highlights from his conclusions:

Confession consummated in martyrdom is ultimately grounded in Christ's martyrdom. Martyrs do not follow Christ so much as Christ confesses through them.

Cyprian repeatedly relates the reward of martyrdom to fidelity, not to the act of martyrdom itself. In doing so he shows a real insight into the nature of providence, the justice of God, and the vicissitudes of life.

Cyprian, following Tertullian, situates the key theological issue as idolatry. Confession and persecution in his context does revolve around the issue of idolatry, not merely persecution for the sake of being Christian, and the tortures of Christians are aimed at apostasy through idolatry, not infliction of penalty per se. Cyprian’s exhortations involve a strong urging to true worship, by unmasking the reality of idols and idolatry, gravely warning of the consequences, and reinforcing the superiority of Christian religion. Cyprian’s treatment demonstrates a theological depth and integration with doctrine unprecedented with regard to martyrdom. This integration is thoroughly Christological, centered around the person and work of Christ, and monotheistic: to confess Christ is to worship God.

Christian music for kids and the sovereignty of God

For one of my kids, the music of that great Aussie Christian entertainer Colin Buchanan has really started to catch on. And it is great stuff. We call it 'Calvinism for Kids!'

However, I notice that in the album I have anyhow ('Remember the Lord') he overwhelmingly emphasises the Sovereignty of God. So: 'My God is So Big'; 'Nothing Takes God By Surprise'; 'Old Black Crow' (about providence); 'And God Said'.

We are more than half way through the album before Jesus and the Gospel get a mention ('We all like sheep have gone astray'). But the direction of the theology is from God's sovereignty to God's grace: whereas, I would have thought to go the way around. We know of God's sovereignty, and his power in creation and his providential care from the cross outwards...

The possible problem of starting with Sovereignty is (and it is an old problem for some Calvinism): a tendency to make God seem remote and inscrutable, so that the statements about the love of God seem to strike a jarring note. Colin's terrific doctrine of creation means that he points to creation as evidence of God's power, but he tends to just assert God's love rather than give evidence of it in the same way. It's there, but it comes down the list.

Thoughts? Anyone else noticed?

NOTE: I think Colin is a special gift of God to Australian Christians and want it to be understood that I 100% support his work and I have purchased and play lots of his CDs. And will continue to do so.

The Jesus Storybook Bible

The inestimable Gordon gave a rave review to The Jesus Storybook Bible - and so we obediently purchased a copy.

It came today - and it looks really very good in every respect. We haven't put it to use yet, but the pictures by Jago are very, very good and the text by Sally Lloyd-Jones (from the little bits we have read) is everything we could wish for.

Go buy a copy! Your Christmas giving problem is solved!

Revolutionary Calvinism - Stout again

Stout speaks passionately about democracy, and against the anti-liberal-democratic reading of history proposed by Hauerwas and co:

The first modern revolutionaries were not secular liberals; they were radical Calvinists. Among the most important democratic movement in American history were Abolitionism and the Civil Rights movement; both of these were based largely in the religious communities. Religious colleges and seminaries provided strong support for both movements. If religious premises had not been adduced in support of them, it is unlikely that either movement would have resulted in success. The Christian majority needed to be persuaded in both cases that commitment to scriptural authority was at least compatible with the reform being proposed. If the religious Left does not soon recover its energy and self-confidence, it is unlikely that American democracy will be capable of counteracting either the greed of its business elite or the determination of many whites to define the authentic nation in ethnic, racial or ecclesiastical terms. Democracy and Tradition, p. 300

This reminder is salutary. I think a nice renaissance of religious reasoning is occurring in Australia, and it isn't just a Right wing thing. I wonder if it will bear fruit... Stout could have added Prohibitionism to his list, and that was a movement stemming from the same source but which squandered a good deal of political capital as far as religious groups were concerned.

Evangelical Anglicans and the sectarian temptation

Caveat: in general, I find church-political blog entries drive me nuts. But this is just a thought I am trying to put into words, so indulge me!

I take it as a fait accompli that the Anglican communion as it has been known for about 120 years is on the point of disintegration. Now, I am a Protestant, so I don't find this as alarming as some do. I find unity for unity's sake, shorn of any content, incomprehensible.

But: there is a danger that as the new alignments emerge evangelicals will pursue sectarianism to its logical extreme and split even amongst themselves.

The benefits of being Anglican for an evangelical are actually quite considerable.
For one, the formularies and liturgy are ones which we can happily and even proudly sign as an expression of the Reformed and Biblical faith. Still.

Second, the besetting sin of Protestantism - sectarianism - is considerably ameliorated. So, evangelicals are protected from their own tendency to pursue an ideal and over-realised church on earth. (The problem of course is a lack of clear church discipline, which has got us into this mess!) While taking doctrine seriously - very seriously - it is not so to the extent that adiaphora become matters for schism. Reformed and Presbyterian groups are notorious for this finding of ever more strict and particular theological positions.

Third, the intellectual and cultural and political heritage of Anglicanism has protected us from the anti-intellectualism, obscurantism and culture-hostility that is feature of much evangelicalism. So, you won't find many young earth creationists amongst Anglican evangelicals. When I meet Americans for whom 'evangelical' equates to a particular political stance and a craven capitulation to the culture, we take a long while to sort each other out!

Fourth (and this is a somewhat perverse point) - being in a denomination alongside liberals and catholics has meant that evangelicals have had to fight major theological battles rather than minor ones. And think this means strength.

Fifth, while we hold to a the ultimate authority of the Bible, we are still brought into engagement with a lively (even firey?) tradition of Christian orthodoxy. We are of the magisterial reformation. And, we aren't wedded to the Regulative Principle (whew!).

There are more advantages to be outlined, doubtless. My question is: in the forthcoming new Anglican world order, which for some evangelicals will mean a purer and more faithful church certainly, what will be lost? Is there a danger of becoming sectarian? How can it best be avoided?

Stout savages Hauerwas

Hauerwas is so dominant in the thinking of a generation of American theologians that is a relief to hear him challenged. But Stout does so as a non-theologian: it is a shame that it took a non-theologian to do it:

A cynic might say that the secret of Hauerwas's vast influence in the church in the 1980s and 1990s lay in the imprecision of the sacrifice he appeared to be demanding of his followers. Surely he was not proposing that the strength of one's sentimental identification with the church could by itself secure noncomplicity with the evils of the world. His favourite patristic text appears to be Origen's Exhortation to Martyrdom. [Actually, here Stout is taking a piece of O'Donovan's rhetoric in Desire of the Nations rather literalistically! - a bit of a schoolboy error. MJ] But in the absence of a clear statement of the price Christians must be willing to pay, his audience was able to indulge itself in fantasies of martyrdom without experiencing
actualy poverty or persecution at all. (p. 158)

Ouch - harsh but fair. Tenure at Duke hardly seems like persecution, now, does it? He charges Hauerwas with inconsistency over his reading of Scripture. Hauerwas wants to make non-violence thee central feature of the Christian message. But is the pacificist case really convincing on the basis of Scripture? And how come he is such a rigorist on this issue, but not on others - say, on remarriage after divorce? As Stout says:

It is hard...to escape the conclusion that his ethics rests on an extremely selective reading of the Bible. (p. 160)

And further, Stout articulates a point I had thought of but not really expressed before: Hauerwas's church, his 'peaceable kingdom', doesn't seem to exist. When he says 'the church', which church is he talking about? What does he mean? As Stout says,

The actual church does not look very much like a community of virtue, when judged by pacificist standards. (p. 161)

Jeffrey Stout asks three good questions

It's been a hard couple of weeks!

Stout challenges MacIntyre, Hauerwas and Milbank - who have harboured such resentment against modern secular democracy. He asks three good questions (Democracy and Tradition, p. 104):

is it not possible to discern the workings of the Holy Spirit, and thus some reflections of God's redemptive activity, in modern democratic aspirations?

is there nothing in the political life of modern democracies, or in the lives of those who are struggling for just and decent arrangements within them, that a loving God would bless?

if the plenitude of God's triune inner life shones forth in all of creation, cannot theology discren some such light in democratic political community?

Well indeed. I would add a fourth question: is it not the case that modern democratic community is the child of Christendom, even if it is somewhat of a prodigal?

Jeffrey Stout and Piety

Jeffrey Stout is a very interesting figure in the American political philosophy and ethics scene. For one, he is a liberal who takes theologians and theology seriously. In particular, he addresses the work of Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre as 'new traditionalists', and even adds to this company John Milbank. Stout is a finder of common ground, a man who mediates between seemingly intractable positions.

In his 2004 book Democracy and Tradition, Stout traces some interesting themes. Often, democracy is accused of 'impiety' by traditionalists: it emphasises self-reliance rather than observance of the conventions of the community and the spirit of place. Yet, in his reading of Emerson and Whitman, Stout finds that piety is in fact reconfigured rather than abandoned. He would contend then, that democracy is spiritual and pious, if not religious.

More on this anon.

Martyrs and providence

To accept a martyr’s death in the name of the one in whom all things are reconciled to God is not then as astonishing as it might seem. The nonchalance with which the first generations of martyrs are depicted as accepting their terrible fate is no doubt exaggerated: but the truth that it serves to illustrate is that for the disciple of Christ there is both a way to make sense of the persecution and no reason to fear its consequences. Not only are the martyrs recorded as entrusting themselves to the providential care of the Father in the face of demonic opposition; the very martyrdoms themselves are depicted as being (in Eliot’s words) ‘by the design of God himself’. They even understand their own suffering as under his providential hand. As the author of ‘The Martyrdom of St Polycarp’ comments:

Blessed indeed and noble are all the martyrdoms that took place in accordance with God’s will. For we must devoutly assign to God a providence over them all.

Under interrogation, Pionius replies to the question ‘Which god do you worship?’ thus:

The God who is almighty…who made the heavens and the earth and things that are in them, and all of us; the God who richly furnishes us with everything, the God we know through Christ his Word.

Pionius knows God in Christ; and in Christ he knows God the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. And for that divinity, he is prepared to die ­– though, as he describes it, he is ‘not rushing towards death, but towards life.’

New Testament faith in providence

The saints of the Old Testament could have prayed the Lord's prayer on the basis of the memory of God’s historical acts and the witness of the prophetic word. Their faith was not in a different Lord. But the New Testament adds to the history of God’s people the decisive appearance of the Son of God (Heb 1:1-3; 11:39-40). In his death and resurrection, the kingdom of God inaugurated. We have from the story of Abraham and Isaac the view of divine providence as not merely the provision of sustenance but the provision of a sacrifice that God himself demands of his creatures. God himself is the provider of what he requires of men and women. On the other hand, Jesus’ own teaching about the kingdom of God points to its eschatological nature. The world and its history as they are lie under the judgement of God. Its destiny, as things stand, is to be wound down, unravelled and subject to destruction. The testimony of the New Testament authors, on the basis of the resurrection of Christ from the dead in the power of the Spirit, is that Jesus Christ was the sacrifice provided by God to meet his just requirement and reconcile fallen humankind to himself. This was not only decisive for individuals, but indeed for the destiny of the whole created order (Col 1:19-20; Rom 8:19-23).

What Paul knows, and what he doesn't...

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the noetic point on which a belief in providence has its entire basis. Belief in providence is not an inference from history; nor is it a claim to know the pattern of the times. It is not augury or cloud-reading. Belief in providence is not a claim to special knowledge of the providential plan, but merely a claim to knowledge that there is such a plan and that has been made by one with the power and the will to accomplish it. From the covenant history which culminates in the Son of God’s action for salvation of the world we learn of the purpose and character of God to which all other history is ordered. When Paul exclaims, at the end of his troubling discussion of the election of Israel in Romans 9-11 –

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?” 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.

– he is not expressing in apophatic terms a despair of ever knowing the ineffable deity who must himself remain ever discreetly hidden behind a cloud of unknowing, but rather his joy in the righteous and loving character of God revealed in the gospel of his power (Rom 1:16). Though the plan of God is a yet concealed from view, his character has in fact been made known in gospel. This thought is Paul’s consolation.

Introduction to the Bible: some notes V - 2 Samuel 7

Some notes on 2 Samuel 7 for the interested:

Some readers are tempted to conclude that this covenant abrogated the existing covenant with Israel, but the close interweaving of 2 Samuel 7 with earlier covenant material should prevent this conclusion ‘The covenant of David fits within the covenant structure of Israel’ (Dumbrell 1994, 72). What is more, David receives this promise as Israel’s representative; as the king he embodies and represents the people (Köstenberger 2001, 39). Note the hope of royal priesthood in Exodus 19, which allows us to conclude that the person of the king ‘embodies the covenant expectations of Exodus 19:6’ (Dumbrell 1994, 72). 2 Sam 7:14 should thus be read against Exod 4:22; and 2 Sam 7:1 should be read against the goal of the exodus. ‘Through the occupant of the throne of Israel, Davidic kingship is to reflect the values that the Sinai covenant requires of the nation’ (Dumbrell 1994, 71f.).

Likewise, we have seen how the Davidic covenant takes up the promises to Abraham. The ‘great name’; the ‘place for my people Israel’; the ‘rest’ from enemies still to be given which echoes not only exodus but the creation rest to which the exodus rest pointed, all suggest a reiteration of the Abrahamic covenant in such a way that God’s saving purposes for humanity through Abraham are seen to be continued through the Davidic king, YHWH’s viceregent in his rule over the nations (Köstenberger 2001, 39f.).

Bill Dumbrell also writes:

Through Davidic kingship, divine government through Yahweh’s appointed intermediary, to whom the world must be subject, is established. Thus, Yahweh’s full intentions for the human race will be realized through wise administration by Israel’s messiah. The notions of the charter for humanity, of the dominion which that is to confer, and of kingship over Israel exercised by the Davidic representative were all finally brought together and fused in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who as son of David was son of Abraham, yet also Son of God.

This Blog's Greatest Hits

Well, here is a list of the posts that have scored the most comments on this blog. What I note is that those with more pastoral themes (such as the previous post) seemed to have garnered most interest. The list:

bible and theology

jungel

sacraments

the art of blogging

talking to an atheist

the great evangelical bible swindle

creatio science and calvin

von balthasar and impassability

corporal punishment

violence what is it

if Christian schools were really Christian

gurus

order in genesis 2 and 3

straining at gnats

David Hicks

power of scripture

a tension in evangelicalism

about blogging

brief sydney lives

pierced for our transgressions

is postmodernism passe?

office politics

cuteness and its relevance for evangelical ethics

professionalism vs amateurism

gentle answer turneth away wrath

a good lecturer

collapse of evangelical consensus

gentle answer discussion continued

The Pastor's Wife - an observation in the age of professionalism

The role of the minister's wife is in a state of flux, it seems to me (at least in the Sydney diocese with which I am most familiar). Back in the day, it was obvious (ok I am simplifying) - Rev and Mrs were in it together. A parish was more like a small business than a profession. If you went to the corner store in Sydney, you might get Con or you might get Tula (back in the 70s anyway). Both of them were in the business together. This went without saying. Over at St Bloggs, it was pretty much the same. I worked for one minister and his wife for whom this was exactly how it was: Mrs was in charge of all ministry to women in the parish and had input on all decision making at every level pretty much.

Nowadays, we expect our pastors to be professionals. If there's a ministry to be done, we pay for it. So, we have a women's pastor and a youth worker to do what was previously done by amateurs. And this means team meetings and five year plans and training and all the rest. Frequently now the pastor does not work from his study at home but goes out in the morning to an office with a secretary and his colleagues.Often, the pastor's wife is in an odd situation then: is she part of the team or not? She and her husband may have planted the church: now it is bigger, is she still given input in decision making? Does she 'outrank' the young tyro curate fresh out of college and full of ideas? What should her role be now that we have a women's pastor who has a theological degree? He is trained after all, and a professional. She is merely amateur. Also, because most of our ministers and their wives come from the professional classes, she may be pursuing her career outside the parish, and we have come to accept this as her right since she is not the one being paid, and so we don't even inquire.

The negative results have been: trouble on ministry teams where it was felt the minister's wife was interfering, when all she was doing was expecting the kind of input that she formerly had when the church was small; or, an increasing dislocation from the church felt by ministry wives.

However: looking at some websites of Charismatic churches, I noticed a real difference. Time after time you are welcomed to the church not by the pastor but by the couple: Brian and Bobbie for example, or Phil and Chris. I don't think that this churches have a particularly egalitarian theology, so it is not merely a case of a difference at that level. But I have yet to find the Sydney Anglican church where this is done: inevitably you are greeted by the professional - the man, in other words. The contrast is quite marked: you are left in no doubt that the charismatic church is a family affair, with a ministry shared by male and female (whatever view of headship is expressed).

Barth on the Christian seeing differently

Barth's chapters on Providence highlight the existential and pastoral aspects of the doctrine. The doctrine of Providence is in a very real sense all that separates the Christian who lives in the world of tsunamis and cancer and his neighbour who lives in the same world. What makes him different? Firstly, Barth says that is because the Christian as a creature affirms his own 'creaturely occurence'. That is, the Christian accepts his own being as a creature and not as a being of pure will, or an evolved organism. But he goes on...

Our answer can be the very simple one that he sees what the others do not see...What makes him a Christian is that he sees Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in the humiliation but also in the exaltation of His humanity , and himself united with Him, belonging to HIm, his life delivered by Him, bu also placed at His disposal. (C.D. III.iii.241)

Being a Christian is looking with different eyes on the same view.
It is merely a matter of seeing things differently.

Sharing in Christ's sufferings

A few posts back, Gordo reminded me of the texts that speak of the believer (well, the apostle) sharing in Christ's sufferings. I was pointing out that suffering persecutions was only to be expected as a condition of life as a believer in Christ - but that these sufferings were not our own but rather his. I cited 1 Peter 4:12.

But 1 Peter 4 continues:
But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.

The nature of the martyr's sufferings are that they are, wondrously, a participation in Christ's.

The verse Grodo was alluding to is Col 1:24:

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

It's is a very interesting passage all up, coming as it does after a declaration of the cosmic scope and sufficiency of Christ's sufferings on the cross.

What could possibly have been lacking in Christ's afflictions? Can we allow Paul a hyperbole here - an ironic overstatement? i.e. 'I am supplying what is lacking in Christ's sufferings (not really meaning that something was, but I am suffering in participation with the sufferings of Christ etc)'. Is that his point? Or is that there needed to be an ecclesiogical working out of Christ's suffering in some manner?

Rowan Williams and Tendenzkritik

In his essay on Maurice Wiles, Rowan Williams finishes with this question:

Wiles is far from insensitive to this priority of krisis over Kritik; but how can his model of doctrinal criticism allow it its proper weight?

By Kritik Williams is indicating not just that historical criticism which questioned the integrity and historical objectivity of the New Testament texts as texts, but also Tendenzkritik - that criticism, originating with FC Baur and the Tubingen School, which sought to uncover the interests at play in the text. In other words, the text is a site of, or a move in, a power struggle, and we can reconstruct the struggle, and then interpret the text in the light of the struggle.

So, Williams is saying to Wiles - 'sure, we ought to enquire as to whose interests are being served in this text, and do some pretty serious unmasking. But even thought you claim you are really interested in how people encounter Christ, can you really show that you put this as a priority?' It's a good question, but one that Williams himself doesn't necessarily evade. In his own work, he does take a great deal of time talking about the moment when people encounter Jesus and how that breaks open into new things, new possibilities; but can he really admit so much Tendenzkritik in and still hope to rescue an inner kurnel of pure Jesus from the mess? By accepting that so much of the Bible is impure and obscure, how can he not have knocked away the supporting testimony to Jesus Christ in its credibility?

Acts 4:24 in the Martyr-acts

When they [the believers] heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. "Sovereign Lord," they said, "you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. (Acts 4.24)

One text reappears in the ancient martyr-acts more than any other: Acts 4:24.

It is used by Apollonius in his interrogation. 'Yes, I am a Christian...and hence I worship and fear the God who who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them.' (Musurillo's Acts of the Christian Martyrs, p. 91). When Pionius is asked 'which go do you worship?' he replies 'the God who...'. (p. 157). Cyprian likewise identifies the singular object of his worship. Fructuosus likewise (p. 179). Irene declares herself unwilling to sacrifice 'for the sake of the God almighty who...' (p. 289). Crispina says 'May they never find it easy to make me offer sacrifice to demons: but I sacrifice to the Lord who...' (p. 305). Euplus adds an affirmation of the Trinity (p. 317). Phileas cites this text in answer to the question 'which God?' (p. 339-41).

What can we infer from this? A couple of suggestions:
1- the martyrs and their martyrologists consciously identified themselves with the situation of the apostles and the early church recorded in the book of Acts, and saw the language recorded there as theirs to use. They took what was recorded as a prayer and used it as a part of their witness to their captors and interrogators.
2 - an affirmation of monotheism in all its aspects is a crucial to the martyr's perception of their own witness. That is, worship was due to this one deity without compromise or comparison. He is not a tribal deity. For a Gentile Christian this must have been axiomatic.
3 - this is not because of a soteriological motif (which surprises me) but because of his sovereign power in creation. This verse attests to the power and worth of God, the Christian God, over all creation - this isn't a matter of inner conscience, but of universal declaration, even (dare I say) truth.
4 - the Christian's identity is ordered to this affirmation of the sovereignty of God. 'I am a Christian' they say, 'namely, one who worships the Lord of everything and not just of Rome'.

Gunton on Providence and the Spirit

Gunton's great contribution (one of) was a reinspection of the theology of the Spirit and his role in the work of God towards the world.

The Spirit is both the one who upholds the human Jesus in the truth of his being and calling and the one who, by mediating the Father's action in raising him from the dead, transforms his body to the life of the world to come. All particular acts of providence derive from and take something of the shape of the paradigmatic redemptive act. The Triune Creator p. 177-8

It is worth asking what this means, 'take something of the shape of'...? A martyrdom, for example, is a particular act of providence which certainly derives from the resurrectional work of the Spirit - but does it take something of the shape of it? He continues:

As a form of enabling personal action, providential action, the Spirit's action is that which libeartes things and people to be themselves, as, paradigmatically, the Spirit's leading enable the human Jesus to be truly himself in relation to God the Father and the world. p. 184

I like especially how he picks up the way in which the Spirit ministered to Jesus in the Gospel narratives - something somewhat eclipsed in the Augustinian tradition.

Dame Helen Gardner

Helen Gardner was of the old school of literary critic - you know, the sort that wasn't obsessed by theory or by discerning what ideological interests were at play in the text.

But she wasn't afraid of sticking it to such eminent figures as T.S. Eliot (much beloved of this blog). In her The Art of TS Eliot she really gives Murder in the Cathedral quite a panning. She's right of course: as a play it makes a good church service. Essentially, nothing happens in the play (always a downer for an evening out at the theatre). The 'action' is concealed from the audience because it is spiritually realised. And Thomas isn't even very likeable. Gardner uses the expression 'classic prig'. As she puts it:

The problem is whether drama can deal with sin, and still be drama, or whether like the law, it can only deal with crime.

She goes on:

The central theme of the play is martyrdom, and martyrdom in its strict, ancient sense. For the word martyr means witness, and the Church did not at first confine the word to those who sealed their witness with their blood; it was a later distinction that separarted the martyrs from the confessors. We are not to think of a martyr as primarily one who suffers for a cause, or who gives up his life for truth, but as a witness to the awful reality of the supernatural.

Quite. The best bit of the play, she thinks, is the Chorus:

...the play transcends its origin and occasion, and the chorus becomes humanity, confronted by the mystery of iniquity and the mystery of holiness.

Emil Brunner on Providence

Ever wondered what to think when the next Grammy-award winner thanks Jesus for her success? Hear Brunner:

If the Cross of Christ be the greatstumbling-block of the world, then the visible fate of so many Christians in the olrd, measured by the standards of the world, is also a stumbling-block. Things do not happen as they do in little pious tracts; they do not 'always turn out for the best'. God does not take sides with his own, in the sense of the secular idea of good fortune or happiness....

But this does not mean that there are no visible signs fo divine help and guidance. A purely ascetic and heroic conception of Divine Providence is just as untrue as an exaggerated eudaemonistic idea of the experience of faith or of the divine promise. The undercurrent of divine co-operation comes to the surface now and again. To try to eliminate this feature from the life of the saints...would be to act in a very arbirtrary manner. God constatly give his own 'signs' of His fatherly guidance; clear witness to this truth is given by those apostles who had such a full share in the suferings of Christ that they have a valid claim to the title of 'martyrs'.
The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, p. 158-9